Peace Movements

In partnership with Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco and Chinatown Community Development Center, funded by San Francisco Arts Commission IAC program, Peace Movements is a ten-week durational platform to explore the contradictions of martial arts or performance art as a form of physically embodying peace, and looks to artists to explore how they use the martial arts or movement arts as a way to resist cultural expectations. Artists include Yunuen Rhi, Michael Zheng, and Melissa Wyman.

Yunuen Rhi lead Ba Gua Zhang women’s self defense classes.

Michael Zheng lead a “Family Constellation” session as both performance and group therapy.

This series also helped develop a performative movement language that culminated in a series of live performances with artists Justin Hoover, Yunuen Rhi and Feathpistol.

The Grasshopper - mobile interactive media art

The Grasshopper is an electric vehicle outfit as a mobile projection unit. It is a mobile exhibition space and a new-media platform that produces public space projections in outdoor locations. It creates site-specific, and site-responsive events, video projections and social engagement projects.

In 2018 the project presented participatory video projection art at Untitled Art Fair on the facade of the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco and at the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California.

The Grasshopper utilized live video feeds to place the body of the audience, viewer and of the live performer, Jaleesa Johnston back into the video being fed to the facade projections. This work then also captured participants' movements and gestures around the theme of "Mudras".

The CAR/Peace Rover at the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California

Collective Action Studio and the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California together present Creative Resistance, an art making event. In this video we look at the special projects and hear from key collaborators in the community.

Digital Video Mapping Mural

Outdoor video art projection based off an art workshop developed on-site in relation to the #NoMuslimBanEver campaign.

The video projection is mapped to the non-lighted parts of the facade and integrates graphic elements by Arash Shirinbab, Gabril Garai, Ryan Teldon, and Keyvan Hydari. It overlays graphics of the phrase "No Ban" written in a Cholo style graffiti text and the word love written in Arabic. Special thanks to the ICCNC and Raeshma Razvi for collaboration and to the Rainin Foundation for support.

War Gastronomy: Recipes of Relocation

War Gastronomy is a mobile storytelling archive disguised as a food cart. Together, Chris Treggiari and Justin Hoover cook and trades a hot meal for personal stories of relocation (cultural, geographic, emotional, psychological, etc) told in the form of recipes. You tell us your story as a recipe and next time we go out we cook and share your story/recipe. All food served is served along with the story behind it as you told it to us and we only serve food given to us by people with whom we engage.

This project is an interventionist storytelling project situated on streets, in parks and in partnership with museums, galleries and cultural centers seeking to insert participatory projects into their program.

Calligraphy Voyage

In partnership with the Chinese Culture Center’s 2013 and 2014 Lunar New Year Festival, Collective Action Studio created a portable calligraphy learning station in the art center’s lobby. This project also partnered with the Gold Mountain Society to produce a suite of projects from experimental video projects, public art murals, to calligraphy participatory workshops such as depicted here. Calligraphy Voyage is a project inspired by the multitudes of migrants who are unable to bring physical items with them. Instead, they bring with them intangible heritage. For this installation, Collective Action Studio modified a vintage steamer trunk as a pop-up calligraphy workstation with a special LED/sand writing desk.

Often and classically, wet sand is used to practice calligraphy but here we have updated it using LED technology to make a glowing and self-lit modern experience. The visual feedback one receives when drawing a line in the sand with one's finger encourages further play and practice. Often the use of pen and ink or brush and ink is a barrier to participation since it uses us what some to perceive as precious resources, so this installation's sand/light table solves that problem too.

Sanctuary Print Shop

Print your own poster or come for a workshop with founders Sergio De La Torre and Chris Treggiari, who aim to raise awareness about the concept of being a “sanctuary city” as well as disseminate information on the recently enacted immigration policies and how they impact our community. Sharing art and infographics, leading silkscreen workshops, and distributing printed material throughout the city, Sanctuary Print Shop serves as a resource center and catalyst for the movement to uphold immigrants’ rights.

Obsolete Man

Designed as a street theater public intervention The Obsolete Man recreated the trial scene from the original 1961 Twilight Zone episode by the same name. The performance began with the "librarian" character on trail for obsolescence, a forgotten job function in a fascist future without books and ended in his "retirement". In the performance intervention, the piece continued with members of public stepping up to the microphone and arguing for their worth in contemporary society as the "chancellor" condemned or accepted them.

The subject is a reflection on the gentrification of San Francisco and the shifting of value across sectors and demographics amidst the 2014 housing affordability crisis.

This work is in collaboration with Heather Holt, Justin Hoover, Chris Treggiari and the public. Special thanks to Digital Garage for sponsoring it and to Root Division for curating it.

Stew-topia

Stew-topia is a participatory object. It is table made up of sections that require people to hold it in place in order to eat off of it. On the table top are placemats that ask your fellow diners and yourself to collaborative write a recipe for the perfect city. If the elements of a city were food, what is your idea, utopian city consist of? Would it be delicious or disgusting and why?

It asks us what does it mean to stay in one place? To stay true to your original home and customs? What does it mean to be left, to be the few remaining, to be the last one?

Civic Stew explores themes of resilience, desertion, and buoyancy of spirit. As the world becomes more and more global, people are flocking to large cities, places where things are happening, places where they can “be a part of it all”. As an emigrant to a bigger city, there are arguably many more things to do, places to work, and opportunities for advancement. However, what are we all losing by becoming homogenized, standardized, and globalized? By having everything all the time and all at once, what are we consigning to oblivion?

Mobile Screen Print Cart

Designed and built by Peter Foucault and Chris Treggiari, the Mobile Screen Print Cart, was featured at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts among other locations. An interactive, neighborhood-generated social sculpture inspired by the design of a classic teardrop trailer that is towed behind a vintage Vespa scooter. The Mobile Screen Print Cart explores the varied history of community posters in the Bay Area, while simultaneously giving the viewer a platform to create their own original, individual posters that will be dispersed throughout the Bay Area. For this project the Print Cart has collaborated with celebrated printmaker and educator Art Hazelwood and invited local art blog SF Art Enthusiast to conduct on-site video interviews. Interactive performance pieces will also take place throughout the evening inviting the public to become active participants in this multi-media event.

Hidden in the Hutch

Hidden in the Hutch asks the public to write stories of the food they remember as a child, specifically, food that help emotional spaces within them. The final product took the form of a wall installation at 18 Reasons, a food and community center in San Francisco, CA. Collective Action Studio designed the interaction so the plates were available for people to write personal stories on and share with each other and the public.

Mobile Arts Platform

The Mobile Arts Platform (MAP) was founded by Peter Foucualt and Chris Treggiari in 2009 with the goal of creating mobile exhibition structures that engage the public. Pictured here is the Peaceful Protest Posters project in which the artist designed and built protest signs for the public and then hosted protest sign making workshops with the 2011 Precita Eyes Urban Youth Arts Festival.

The MAP project is an artistic research lab where a cross pollination of mediums and genres can occur, be accessible to the public, and create strong bonds with partner communities. MAP events include video screenings, visual art installations, performance art, live music, interactive artworks, and culinary art. In essence, we build a temporary, creative microcosm where community and creativity can intersect and flourish.

In a world where we are becoming more insular with advanced technologies our events hope to bring residents together through positive interactions with neighbors and their neighborhood. Here the MAP is partnered with the Cherry Blossom Festival to create a participatory art making workstation including a haiku-flashmob, calligraphy and origami activities by local community artists.

MAP has partnered with Hoover and together have been awarded the Creative Work Fund grant among other disguised awards. MAP creates an autonomous exhibition space in partnership with local fairs and festivals.

Flag Stories: Citizenship Unbound

Young artists from Muslim, intercultural, refugee and immigrant communities in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and San Francisco have spent a year engaging in a transnational creative and cultural exchange around shared issues of migration, citizenship and belonging. Together they have created art about family culture, community identity or personal interests in relation to the concepts of citizenship and identity, collaborating and sharing with their international counterparts.

This event is a special opportunity for these Young Diplomats to share what they have learned and created as part of this journey. Their digital prints, stencils, paintings and video will be on view throughout the evening, which features Malaysian food and drink, student-led tours of the exhibited artwork, a ceremony recognizing their achievements, and an opportunity to meet students & chaperones from the Malaysian cohort in Kuala Lumpur.

About Flag StoriesFlag Stories: Citizenship Unbound is a 40-week youth art and cultural exchange organized by SOMArts Cultural Center in partnership with the Islamic Art Museum of Malaysia.

This Museums ConnectSM project is made possible in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Museums Connect is administered by the American Alliance of Museums.

SOMArts programs are supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Community Arts and Education Program and The San Francisco Foundation.

Public Murals

Community engagement in which the public drives the content and context often finds itself directed towards large paintings in public space. These murals all are based around the practice of engaging directly with a community group, developing a symbolic language, backstory, and theme.

CAS interviewed select members of the student population at the school to learn of their future careers and depicted these dreams and plans as large mural portraits. This is a 120’ mural painted with over 50 volunteers in one day managed by Rebuilding Together and funded by Marketo.

This project resulted from an installation by Xu Tan called KeyWords School. Students from Chinatown were invited to meet with the Chinese Culture Center and Chinatown Community Development Center’s staff and develop a list of their personal keywords - important ideas central to their identities. Then we developed a mural based on a folk tale that all participants shared. The keywords were added as the arrows being shot across the ocean as a parable for the travels of these young immigrants.

Steel Dragons, Wentworth Alley, San Francisco, CA, 22' x 16', 2014. Created collaboratively with CK1, Shaghayegh Cyrus, Gold Mountain Society and Wentworth Alley resident youth, this mural depicts the culmination of a poetry writing workshop by elderly immigrants. The poetry couplet on the outsides of the mural depict the final result from this workshop. The dragon then was designed and painted by CAS and resident youth from Chinatown.

Eyes on Oakland

With simply situated booths set along the walkway of Lake Merritt, this Oakland Museum of California event brought together a wonderful slice of Oakland’s creative community.

A collaboration between the Oakland Museum, the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Mobile Arts Platform, this weekend's community engagement experience centered around the concept of community and surveillance in Oakland. With over 565 cameras owned and operated by the Oakland Police Department, the role of surveillance and its effect on our lives is more salient than ever.

With the goal of promoting art making, while also educating the community about the prevalent issues regarding police surveillance, the collaborative art making project known as Eyes on Oakland aimed to engage participants by attracting them to join the conversation on police surveillance.

The brainchild of Chris Treggiari and Peter Foucualt, the Eyes on Oakland project is based within the narrow walls of a 1963 Ford Falcon, serving as an on the move hub for community engagement. Creating autonomous exhibition spaces wherever they go, the activities aims to facilitate dialogue, knowledge, and critical thinking. From video screenings and art installations to live music, and interactive art works, the van functions as a mechanism to entertain and educate.

For Eyes on Oakland specifically, the van is used as a beacon for community engagement. Collecting a wide range of stories, ideas and anecdotes, the van records participants responses to questions on surveillance. Documenting and then sharing this information with a larger community, the initiative has found a home at the Oakland Museum in the form of its own exhibition.

In efforts to learn a bit more about the Eyes on Oakland initiative, we spoke with project founder and visual artist Peter Foucualt, to gain some insight around the purpose and goals of his work.

Why does this type of project resonate with you?

For me, it’s really exciting to see the two fields of journalism and art making merge into one project. The work is coming from two different perspectives, but in a sense we’re working together to obtain a single goal for this project.

What would you say that goal is?

It’s to get people thinking. Thinking about the impact surveillance has (or doesn’t have in their lives). There are a lot of people that are hyper aware of it, and there are others that are more or less oblivious.

We’re just interested in starting that conversation, and building a dialogue by creating multiple points of engagement. Some people are drawn to it because they see these live screen prints being made in front of a van, and it peaks their interest. It sort of hooks them in visually, and then by actually showing the visitors how to screen print (and letting them tackle that themselves) we are teaching them as well.

But also, through the addition of the quiz that we’ve been working with, the exercise sort of tests people’s knowledge about what they know now and what they want to learn.

How did this exhibit come to be? What were some of the ideas that led to its creation?

We’d been talking about doing a project with the Mobile News Van for a while now, but we wanted to do something that could represent not just a single area but multiple neighborhoods. We thought a mobile recording station would be unique in that sense because we could take the project out into all these different neighborhoods and environments and invite people to actually participate with the structure.

So [along with the Center for Investigative Reporting] we created the news van concept, and use it as a collection tool to go out into these different communities and bring that content back into the museum.

Have you received different responses or types of engagement from people depending on the area of Oakland that you’re working in?

Yeah definitely. We actually did two back to back visits. One on the far end of Lake Merritt and then a week later we actually set up outside the Fruitvale bart station. And there were some very different opinions on how surveillance is utilized in these different communities.

What do you think are the most pressing facts about surveillance in Oakland that people should know about?

It’s interesting because there’s different levels of information that people come to the project with. We have some people that are just finding out for the first time that there are devices like the the shot spotter and license plate readers, and they’re like “Wow, I didn’t even know that technology existed!”

And there are those that know that those technologies are out there, but don’t know the amount of money that is being invested in these concepts to make them part of the city’s infrastructure.

What do you want people to walk away from this project with?

Ultimately more awareness. More information. A project can be participatory but also a learning tool that hopefully makes people more aware of their environment and surrounding community.

Light Waves Beach Theater

Immerse yourself in multimedia ocean art in a perfect setting: a secluded cave on Seabright Beach. Join us for an evening of short films, live music, and a performance lecture that connects to MAH’s current exhibition Everybody’s Ocean.

Watch octopi as they maneuver within several tanks and narrow glass tubes in the seven-minute Electric Sheep by Amy Globus. Preview the work-in-progress epic of Oceania by Michael Wilson & Natalie Zimmerman, as they explore the precariousness of the low-lying island nation of Kiribati and the powerfully visible consequences of climate change and sea level rise. Following this is Christina McPhee’s Penumbra Blind, a seven minute film shot on board the LUMCON Pelican in 2010 after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The work investigates industry, biology and overlapping data sets set to wailing electric guitar composed by Bay Area/Brooklyn composer and musician Ava Mendoza.

Continue the night with an audio-visual performative lecture by Constance Hockaday. Constance presents the history of the color blue, sandy-beach survival strategies, major ocean crossings and humanity’s tendencies towards the sea.

The event will feature music by Cookie Tongue, an electro acoustic weirdo mystic art folk band. The event is free and is BYOBC – bring your own beach chair.